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Impermanence of Snow, Reverence of August

by Valyri Sheffner Harris / Octa Möbius Sheffner

/
1.
both eyes open Half-decent joke of a dramatist Invicible to sunlight shattering a point of view Eclipsed all objectivity, poisoned by the assumption of grandiosity Bit all the thorns off a rose, couldnt fake romanticism Just wanted it to be unconditional so there was something to die for Just for a moment anyway, God couldn’t allow that Not like a higher force could ever make it worth it Pitiful, picking up broken glass, smashed a mirror with bare fists Facelooked too nauseating, couldn’t breathe own air exhaust Couldn’t ever feel it but just focused, pretended it was there Left some memories behind, the past set back in crashing tides Buried own meaning in favor of just pursuit, picked up misfortune, laughed half-heartedly Boredom no longer suffocates, welcomed ‘em long ago but they tried holding the door Standing there milquetoast, eyes pointed at a wall, face already headfirst in rotten wood Held the door, imagined footsteps, but there was no sound Couldn’t look back at the source of silence, camped out in corner, no other life Lurking there, lured in a vulture or two that’d at least make deafening calls as it demanded they lick its wounds Could focus on the noise, only thing of apparent significance Chronology collapsed, years spent aging in the same spot, accumulated a library in the same dust Sprawl of meandering knowledge, vast but not as complete as a fool would long for Let in the fumes of rot, neutralized the flavor, turned out they were diging their own claws in Left behind so many chunks of memory the past’s blood became exquisite wine Dripped in enormous qualities, licked it, dried on the tongue once they tried to swallow it No flavor, just a faint hint of forgotten adrenaline, barely anything beyond the surface It too passed
2.
Does all of this end by the time you’ve reached a comfortable cadence? Could speak loudly to excuse the absence I’m sure joke’s on you but you never reached out for comfort I’m sure I’ve been you but separating myself became harder Not that I can laugh anymore but I can accentuate with some punctuation You could’ve made some nice proclamations, clear-cut message, provoke rejuvenation You’ve changed a lot in that time but I’m sure you’ve still got a thing or two for the hopelessly abstract, speaking in paragraphs, your lungs only implied but still you never felt hopelessly heartless, harvested some nice ideas, went to town playing around with crafting destiny, broken away from grandiosity, left puzzled, a vehicle for this neutrality and complete balance, childish vulnerability behind some flimsy blinds, couldn’t even release the veil, maybe break a window to prove you’re still got a healthy leaning towards fantasy, no longer engrossed but still deep in muddy water, fragility resounding somewhere down there, some rather approximate love songs, some half- hearted attempts at pretending you’re willing to entrap yourself, stricken by an absence of honesty, let go of speaking in tongues and whisper a yes or no It’s not you, it’s not me, it’s a disruption of flow Lowest of the low, just render that beast as “fucked up” Throw away your own mercy Torn paper will speak for itself You’re a finite resource Barren of wisdom Exhaust pipe As a resort for total “before you ever existed”
3.
I’m sure Hell itself would let you see some real idyllics, your idols wretched, half-clsoed eyes the flesh you embraced, the ideas of which consumed you, further down a spiral, inventing the wheel again, letting you withdraw, As long as you can build the tower of fragility, let it rise once more, you will attain perfection, bereft of the outlines of regret, your body is a symbol, locked space within no one can live in this new world your fabric work’s been cut thin, torn apart, the ghost of longing simply gave weight to your charade and let you rest on the flowerbed once more it’s no longer yours to adore Because you only could grasp the shadow of a pure rose and onlywhen you throw it away, you’ll let your eyes dry with fear tears no longer emerging. as they would I’ll see you in a distant time, bid farewell as you would, impassioned in your disguise.
4.
Open wound Body collapse Atrophy is my name It’s my symbol of existence Carries me, forward I alone know I’m a puzzle piece Pale beast Illuminated by this rejection no advances No moves into the dark I can’t negotiate your rites This life alone can judge me I’m on speaking terms with your failure and I would rather let it laugh at you Savor the foul taste Rot will be all you have Soon enough Loss for words You’ve never had any Inarticulate bastard Eloquent in silence Fashionista of sophistry New idol for broken youth The devil’s honest in their offerings But all of your gestures are fragile As alluring as they may be What’s innocence but an intent denial? You may know the abstract idea of fate, the terror that it brings But poison always tastes sweeter Peace as mindless complacency Vengeance too is a pittiful claim But what’s your game but a stained aftertaste? Silence will eclipse you, sugar melting into blood, you’ve helped many dig their graves But what’s the fault in an absence of fault? Mouth shut, exit path to nowhere, shard of a kaleidoscope, eyewitness to a single crack juvenile nitpicking, letting you set a perceived fault aside as fragile apart from every single imperfection and soon you’ll choke on the glassy taste of your own crimson puddle of regret.
5.
Modernist got their petty teeth kicked in at a scrapyard Well of ideas dried up, drained of life Flowers enveloping a concrete block, overgrowth makes its demands Urban decay renders God into a scavenger, each on their own Saintly recklessess allocates you some patience, talk to every dead soul, I hear 'em out You too will be in the ground but it's just a verse you recite Poetic chanting with no significance, get out, get out Exit doorway in the back, screen door smashed in, shattered glass embraced by sunlight Flare like quartz, no tainted texture, prophet of light Dead souls meant peasants, body collector the greatest cynicist Claim a body on your hero's journey of conquest and union Many deaths under one living flag Skull too thick for new breath I'm airheaded ammunition, clear out the detritus of uncertainty I've got it clocked in name only, never late, never misunderstand What I most boast is what I most lack and what I most lack is what I most boast I'm a parallel crossing the Earth, one of the many paths encircling Axis shift, numerical ID, dead soul caimed by the plates At the mercy of apocalypstic strife that never comes
6.
I won’t give up, begin again I only live towards the bitter end Shallow beast exasperated, drained of soul Let yourself be whole I claw on through, wasted reflection I break mirros as much as my face lets me I won’t give up, begin again I don’t want to sustain this pitiful form I don’t have eyes, I only have lenses Mirroring my view Stained by filth of perception I make a claim for isolation Sanctuary is no place for me I won’t give up, begin again Your own smiling face twisted into a grin Contorted into love eventually
7.
I’ve written every tragedy possible in hopes of reminiscing on terror for a moment , maybe just to give terror some split second credit, impassioned scream s punctuated by a date or two. August 4 years ago as of now isn’t a time beyond a meeting, July 22nd a year ago is the first step to a curtain being peeled back. Still as velvet as theatre would demand, it’s imperfect in its cynical innocence, romance barely seemed like a weight, a necessary good soon becoming a “necessary evil” when you had to yell piercing the glass cage, inhumanity not so distant as August a year ago came. August 15th, 2019: hopeless adrenaline, hours upon hours of misunderstanding, a marathon of what for a moment semed like something with the magnitute of hopeless thrill left scars imprinted on good faith, moved on from puppeteering, trauma as a marionette for what little credit I had left in the moment. Some nice assumptionss with sweet bad blood, pathetic moralistic exercise in ensuring you can get back at someone, agitator with puppydog eyes, yelping in tears with no authenticity, least I want all that anger to be fragile nonsense. Vulnerability is a bitch, best in the game at entrapment, plain insecurity manifesting as arbitrary strengthening, cover up all impact beyond locked eyes, staring dead at each other in hunger, a month later distance broken. Still avoidant of everything else, but god only knows you have a reason to be how you are now. Summer skyline so familiar, for once lacking in glaring hatred, maybe that’s just the wounds carved into your skull speaking.. I’m eternally content with anything so insignificant deprived of its judgmental glance, I’m no impassioned mystic clinging onto fate for just this moment. I claim no knowledge of this moment, I am free of the liberty of spilled blood, because in the end you need an artist’s license for brutality, how lauded can one be without an absence of regret? I guess you can tell everything you want to tell to the fluttering shards of a broken mirror calling out for help, smiling face in kaleidoscopic motion, I’m balancing the dynamics of crystalline prose pouring out lonesome in subsiding heat, a wanderer in this world calling out for heartbeat driving every single motor chain of cogs and gears, it’s been a long time since you’ve reached a reverie of scattered steps across pavements, rain puddles splashed, don’t care about reunion with childhood, that was always lacking anyway, I’m building a big machine to visualize my map of fantasy engrossed in light leaks, ocean of pure transgression, serpentine beast in the ocean, high tower of lwo fantasy high-tech marinated in cinematic obsession, visualizing some arbitrary figure as the “other artist”: put ona favorite song, start building some associations, have them permanently stick with you in your idleness, when surreal vulnerability becomes pleasant it’s a rug of fragile fur and a cabin in the woods, campfire songs and burnt marshmallows, bespectacled view into quiet domestic life, I talk a lot of shit because no one else wants to make others hear it. Pale sun in your throat, everything’s separated from you, lost far away, view of the sea, sometime distant, someplace distant, same sky hared at opposite ends, a ray of light in tangential words, throw around some obtuse joke you both will laugh at for 5 seconds, an infinity symbol, linguistic roots fo rheroism and justice, subtract some space in the syllables, shape it up for memorability, cut the discernibility, sounds the same inthe end even if accent affects it ,linguistic alienation, caught offguar by something foreign uttering a single word, “Spasibo!” mispronounced later when recording, couldn’t be bothered to correct the pronunciation, maybe it’s just stylized, maybe it’s just ignorance, the basic words of thanks as the slice of out of context screentime, I’m not here ad I’m not there, it’s not that I view staying home alone for hours at a time, wasting budget on quick food, getting fed with more, stomaching the exotica of a town much bigger, enough for the presence of a commodity across the cruel sea, tidal wave crashing in perpetual rhythm, domino effect offsetting the philosophy of graduality, it’s all just totality, minimalism lacks some punch after a while, death lingers but no longer on the mind, haven’t made ends meet in regards to tied up loose ends, it just hangs in there, dusted off, rejection of a name you weren’t given by your own will, eventually complete forgetting, of who you were once supposed to be but weren’t, spiteful farewell, show up to a duel eating cherries out of a hat, but your opponent doesn’t suggest you wait until you’re happy to die, because you’re already armed to the teeth like a fucking animal reciting the cascading embarrassment of what’d seem like comfortably numbing boredom, indulgence in the fruits of lack of self-awareness, soon realizing that it’s all a deathly barrage just for a second, and you could just look up at the sky and damn God,, your request a wish growing in volume, a wish growing in meaning, a wish eternal. You can’t speak for much longer but my prowess that restricted itself as a teenager to the fear of eclecticism never letting tit come to fruition, maybe with your personal anecdotes of abstraction and boxing matches with formatting on a shitty laptop barely able to render a spiral, barely able to play back the guttural screams of feedback without overclocking, you could start feeling things. You wrote a dedication, seemed sarcastic, maybe you had to warn me, tell me that it’s alright, no grudges held, you could’ve left my name in but I’d soon change it, a confession of intent and then a confession of acceptance of possibility, swirls of blue entanglement and passion and that fierce sense of community, looked better when you opened it and zoomed in I’m sure, no breathing room at initial glance, soon it’d lay out a geography of mascropic worlds in a browser tab, unintentional yet probably wanting to borrow from your explosiveness, soon I’d be working as the scullptor of effigies for your far off dark worlds, now we joke about peasants and the occult, and the enveloping of a chapel by flames, deathly screaming, captured in echoes, disruption of pastoral fantasy, and soon quiet terror, I could burn a pipe organ, watch it exhale flames, but the majesty of something so uch bigger than life itself intimidates me, so much so than venomous ideas of a pale blue dot themselves.. Nothing is much larger than your own vicinity, nothing is much larger than subjective awe, momentary in its catch of breath. Has a serenade grown obsolete? I’ll be waiting for you there. Hidden away in some distant overgrowth path. An epic poem lacking the hero’s journey. Some crass joke to render love casual, and the next year’s snow as a motif ofimpernance.
8.
Grave coated in sawdust, space locked beneath contour of fragility pouring down as rain Completely obsolete, I’m trudging on in I’m not doing you favors I’m just hoping to discern what’s lost now what’s irretrievable what’s ineffable what’s inevitable what’s burnt in a flame of hate I’ve been digging up everything dirt on any man’s name Loneliness renders you futile, soon that’s your whole endgame i’m not you i’m not that burnt chunk of rot either i won’t give up, begin again i’ve said that to myself sometimes i’m sure it’s been separated i brought roses to my own rites i coated my own grave before i dug it i sawed off the head of a statue a wooden idol erected of nobility i’m but a sense of location i’m a compass for everyone surrounding this is the meticulous ending of whatever was espoused by many years ago i’m final but i can’t have any good reason to be i’m defiant hel’s stranded me alone in my headspace i can’t even trust the devil now temptation was never a poison but you can’t offer temptation and let it wear a crown it can’t rule this earth because transgression wil fail the royal man everything will uproot the history that birthed it and everything will let it collapse it’s a spectacle in name only because there’s nothing to be achieved i’m not you. i won’t give up on being you either i’m sure i’ve given triumph a bad name i’’ve loked into your eyes i’ve seen nothing but crimson flame i am no longer capable of divinity i am no longer enamored with theatre i am no longer enamored with charade

about

NYS#1

AN EPOCH OF CONSTRUCTED EPICS, IT STARVES
Whose blood seeps into the charred night? or
or soft plague / soft death / soft rot / soft exit / soft god / soft array
or "whose sleep is this?" or ROMANCE IS FLESH or
"I love love stories because they can kill me." (etc, etc, ad infinitum)

An album with lyrics written by Octa Möbius Sheffner and then elaborated by Valyri Sheffner Harris and then arranged by Valyri Sheffner Harris and then visually directed by both.
An album with lyrics about relationships and then arrangements reflecting escalations and borderline downfalls of relationships.
An album with free association poetry consisting mostly of obtuse in-jokes and stream of consciousness monologues then read by someone whose entire present ouvre has been entirely stream of consciousness, going as far as to make drum sounds out of rambling.
An album written in August 2020 and then fully recorded & actualized in what is essentially two days in December 2020 after the completion of two other albums, scheduled for 2021.
A mass of bad decisions, awful decisions, fair enough decisions, life-affirming strong decisions and then fully sealed by scheduling it for Christmas essentially fifteen minutes after its completion.
A mass of a teasingly bickering young couple shouting at each other in various degrees of jest and various degrees of distrust until an album happened.
* Mostly jest and mostly playful hatred, although whatever happens, happens.
And finally: a labor of love and trust. Live and let live, no matter how awful things get.
Merry Christmas.

-OMS
10AM December 24th, MSK / 2AM December 24th, EST

credits

released December 25, 2020

Written by Octa Möbius Sheffner, August 2020
Production & vocals by Valyri Sheffner Harris, arranged August 2020-December 2020
Art direction by Octa Möbius Sheffner (lyric sheets all included in track covers) and Valyri Sheffner Harris (assistance with front cover), August 2020-December 2020

OMS
twitter.com/8_8_8x8_8_8
nextyearssnow.neocities.org

VSH
twitter.com/wintercouplet
valyri.com

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about

Next Year's Snow

Svalbard Seed Vault field recordings label. Dabbling in large-scale interactive hydrophone installations and sixth wave post- Pigfuck on the side.

Art collective est. March 1st 2017

Founded by:
Octa Möbius Sheffner
Valyri Sheffner Harris
Spencer Booth

Previous:
&TIME
earlyprey
(etc.)

Current:
7FORM

Hatemail and/or demos:
snow@ecarlate.company
... more

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